The Ballad of the Iron Curtain
by Firefly99
Summary: [Warning for OC] One of the many little tragedies of the Cold War.


He lurches forward with a knife, but Bond is too quick. It's a simple but effective feint, and he unbalances momentarily when he realises the person he's supposed to stab isn't standing in front of him any more, and then Bond's hands crush straight down into his throat and they struggle against each other for a full minute until he drops the knife and sinks to the floor.

She slinks over and notes the red marks on his neck.

A sensible man would have picked up the knife, but Bond was clearly too into his own aesthetics to do something stupid like that. Instead, she picks it up, because it's a sturdy knife, and because it's easier to steal before rigour mortis sets in.

"I think he needed a breath of fresh air," Bond says, and then turns away as if he'd caught sight of something in the distance.

She glares daggers.

"Is it really necessary to say something like that after you kill a man?" she asks.

Bond looks at her.

"Doesn't it make it," she argues, "too much like - " She doesn't know the English word for the concept she's trying to convey, and merely furrows her brows at him, afraid and angry.

Judging by the look on his face, Bond would have shrugged if he hadn't had so much self-dignity.

"It's necessary enough," he says, and she decides that's the straightest answer she's going to get.

* * *

"Normally they send KGB women after me," Bond tells her, as they run away in the dark. The complex looms behind them like a fantasy citadel, all glass and domes and spiked writing.

"I told you," she tells him, "I am KGB. My name is Asya Ivanova, and I was sent here to provide - "

"You're never KGB," he says, smirking. "I noticed the way you picked up that knife earlier, the way you're wielding it now. You don't learn knife handling techniques like that in the KGB. No. Judging by the fact that you still seem fairly uncomfortable with English and the way you went straight to that air vent earlier, you're GRU. It's written all over you. Which must mean you're here to prevent the KGB obtaining the document. I'd put money on the real Asya being in a ditch somewhere, dead - but judging by the way you acted earlier I think you're too inexperienced to have done it yourself. How many other agents are with you?"

She wished he wasn't so clever.

"Just the one," she says.

"Where is he?"

"Dead."

"Aren't they always?"

"My affiliation changes nothing, Mr Bond," she says, sternly. "The purpose of my mission is to assist you in taking this bastard down and getting documents about him back to my employers before he sets off that bomb and triggers a Hot War. That's what I will do. I'm sure the internal power-struggles of the Soviet Union are of no consequence to you personally."

"Personally? No," he says, and a distant grenade goes off with a flash and lights up the blue in his eyes.

"Don't expect me to trust you."

"It's alright. I don't trust you either."

* * *

James feels heavy on top of her, but warm and incredible, and her head is reeling with the smell of a truly wonderful cologne she doesn't recognise but is no doubt very expensive and hard to find. She has no idea how he managed to make her fall in love with him, but his mouth scrapes along her jaw and she doesn't mind - she doesn't mind about East or West or Communism or Capitalism or the Cold War or even that ever-lurking terrorist bastard. She notes the windscreen is steamed, preventing her seeing the silver nose of the beautiful car pointing out like the prow of a ship.

She makes a little cry and lurches in pleasure, but James's hand catches her wrist before it lands against the dashboard.

"Please don't touch that button," he says, briskly. "Surface-to-air missile."

She laughs huskily. She can't argue with that.

* * *

"I've made contact with the MI6 agent," she tells the radio, in the same native tongue she used to kiss the enemy.

The radio crackles violently, but she's able to make out the voice of the other agent.

"Yes, he was about to take the documents back to England," she says. "I managed to get hold of them. Tomorrow I'll be on a plane back to the residency in Lithuania."

The radio asks another question.

"No, I haven't killed him yet," she says, voice turning sticky and throat getting sore.

She turns the radio off before the other agent can ask her if she's getting attached.

* * *

James looks through the microfilm for a second like it was a piece of coloured glass.

"Well done," he says. "I didn't even notice it was missing for...I'd say an hour? That's very good. Clearly I'm not on form today."

The PPK is a beautiful gun. All smooth engineering. How that small suppressor manages to mask the wicked gunshot sound she'll never know.

"You're going to shoot me," she says, and her eyes well dangerously, almost obscuring the details in his face.

He says nothing.

"It was my job, James," she sobs, and then a cold clarity cuts through her conciousness and she speaks with a dangerous levelness. "I know what you're going to say next."

There's silence, and then pain, and just as the last of her conciousness fades she hears him say 'it's my job, too' and laughs inside at how sick it all is.


End file.
